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Introducing the all new Rize Japan BMW E36 LED tails!

August 15, 2016

LED Lights, News, Rize Japan

A personal passion project for us here at FF, we worked very closely with Rize Japan and Cody Crochett, a local E36 owner, to develop these E36 coupe tails. Normally, we use OEM JDM/USDM tails as a base to convert tails, but we had one hell of a time discovering that the factory BMW tails were “plastic welded” together. Every time we tried to pull the lenses away from the OEM back housings, they would always crack and split. Normally, when this happens, we generally give up on whatever car model this may be, but on the E36, we decided to try aftermarket housings.

Now, we’ve gone down this road before, including models such as the Honda/Acura Integra, EK Civic, etc where aftermarket versions exists, but we normally don’t go further than the prototyping stage because the housings are usually inconsistent and have huge gaps that allow moisture to come through. We expected the same for the E36 tails, but much to our surprise, the aftermarket tails for the E36 had a much better seal, and were easier to take apart for retrofitting. Another bonus was the lack of lens diffusers that would normally scatter the LED pattern such as the ones found on the original lights.

After receiving the first set of lights for Cody’s highly modified coupe, we had him install them and give us his first impressions. He was ecstatic that the lights fit like a glove and were plug and play as advertised. Rize Japan always puts every single tail light housings through rigorous testing, but we like to put the lights to the ultimate test by testing for vibration and water resistance. Suffice to say, Cody’s lights passed with flying colors, so now we can officially offer them to the public.